Mission

Professor Gary Cottrell's lab at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) investigates the mechanisms that underlie cognition in animals and people using computational modeling. Some projects have also advanced the state-of-the-art in machine learning and computer vision. Our work is highly interdisciplinary and draws on findings in psychology, neuroscience, machine learning, computer vision, and behavioral economics.

Recent projects have included the SUN model of stimulus-driven and task-driven visual and aural attention, sparse principal component analysis, unsupervised feature learning from natural stimuli, modeling transsaccadic evidence accumulation for object classification, investigating interhemispheric connectivity, and seeking to understand the mechanisms that underlie face processing.

Professor Cottrell is the head of the NSF-sponsored Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC). He also directs the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Cognitive Science at UCSD, and he is one of the founders of the Perceptual Expertise Network (PEN).

Selected Publications

For our most recent publications, please visit our individual research websites. Most are available at Professor Cottrell's webpage.

Kanan, C. and Cottrell, G.W. (2010) Robust classification of objects, faces, and flowers using natural image statistics. In: Proc IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR-2010).

Nelson, J., McKenzie, C., Cottrell, G.W., and Sejnowski, T. (2010) Experience Matters: information acquisition optimizes probability gain. Psychological Science, doi:10.1177/0956797610372637.

Kanan, C., Tong, M.H., Zhang, L. and Cottrell, G.W. (2009) SUN: Top-down saliency using natural statistics. Visual Cognition, 17:979-1003.

Barrington, L., Marks, T. K., Hui-wen Hsiao, J., and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) NIMBLE: A kernel density model of saccade-based visual memory. Journal of Vision, 8(14):17, doi:10.1167/8.14.17.

Zhang, L., Tong, M., Marks, T., Shan, H., and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) SUN: A Bayesian Framework for Saliency Using Natural Statistics. Journal of Vision, 8(7):32, 1-20.

Hsiao, J. and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) Two fixations suffice in face recognition. Psychological Science. 19(10):998-1006.

Hsiao, J., Shieh, D. and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) Convergence of the visual field split: Hemispheric modeling of face and object recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(12):2298-2307.

Shan, H. and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) Looking around the back yard helps the recognition of faces and digits. In: Proc. IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR-2008).

Tong, M.H., Joyce, C.A., and Cottrell, G.W. (2008) Why is the fusiform face area recruited for novel categories of expertise? A neurocomputational investigation. Brain Research, 1202:14-24.

Tong M.H., Bickett A.D., Christiansen E.M., Cottrell G.W. (2007) Learning grammatical structure with Echo State Networks. Neural Networks, 20(3):424-432.

Shan, H., Zhang, L., and Cottrell, G.W. (2007) Recursive ICA. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 20 (NIPS-2007).

Cottrell, G. (2006) New life for neural networks. Science, 313(5786):454-5.

Inazawa, H. and Cottrell, G.W. (2006) Phase space learning in an autonomous dynamical neural network. Neurocomputing, 69(16-18):2340-2345.

Current Lab Members

Lab Alumni & Visitors

Alumni in Academia & Research

Kristin Branson: Scientist at HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus
Daniel Clouse: Researcher at NASA JPL
Rosemary A. Cowell: Research Scientist at UC San Diego
Matthew Dailey: Assistant Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology
Flavia Filimon: Researcher at the Max Planck Institute
Janet Hsiao: Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong
Arre Laakso: Lecturer University of Michigan - Dearborn
Tim K. Marks: Researcher at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL)
Jeanne Milostan: Lecturer at UC Merced
Jonathan Nelson: Researcher at the Max Planck Institute
David C. Noelle: Assistant Professor at UC Merced
Curtis Padgett: Senior Scientist at NASA JPL
Adam L. Taylor: Research Specialist at Brandeis University
Christopher C. Vogt (a.k.a Chris LuVogt): Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo! Labs

Alumni in Industry

Tim Ash: President and CEO of SiteTuners.com and Epic Sky
Brian Bartell: Founder and CTO of Notiora
Steve Biafore: Executive Vice President of Global Analytics
Richard Calmbach: Fair Isaac Corporation
Dana Dahlstrom: Software Engineer at Google
Parand Tony Darugar: Founder, CEO at Xpenser
David DeMers: Portfolio Manager at Prediction Company
Bret Ehlert: Working at Systran
Casey A. Marks: Founder and President of Five Hut Consulting
George Marnellos: Senior Scientist at Sequenom
William Morris: A-Life Medical, Inc.
Mark Plutowski: Developer at Flipboard Inc.
Lukman Ramsey: Co-founder and CTO at Talk2Us
Honghao Shan: Statistics Scientist at Experian
Eric Wiewiora: Machine Learning Scientist at Cerebellum Capital, Inc.
Lingyun Zhang: Statistics Scientist Lead at Experian

Alumni in Other Professions

Daniel E. Jackson: Attorney with Keker & Van Nest LLP
Fu-Sheng Tsung (a.k.a Jian Hu): Dharma Master at Chung Tai Zen Center

Lab Calendar